Nelson Mandela Saw the Way of Collaboration
Hello. I’m going to tell a story about Nelson Mandela to illustrate the new kind of leadership we need in our world now. As many, most of us know, Mandela was one of the leaders of the ANC at the time of apartheid in South Africa, and many of them were put in prison. He was in jail for 27 years.
Apartheid was this system of oppression of black people, by the minority white population. And for many years, they campaigned to change that system, to open it out. And towards the end of his time in prison, it was clear to the people in power in South Africa, that things were melting down.
All the different factions were pulling in different directions. There was the threat of a bloodbath, of killing. So they allowed, they invited Mandela, to come out and enter into negotiations with the other factions. And the story is that he went to a meeting with some of the other leaders of different factions, and before the meeting started, he made a conversation with the leader of one of the leaders of the far right Afrikaans groups. General Constand Viljoen. Who had been arming the Afrikaners, the Far Right, the white supremacist group, heavily armed, highly trained, very disciplined, to resist the end of apartheid.
Mandela took him before the meeting started, the story goes, he took him to one side, and he made him a cup of tea, and he spoke in Afrikaans. Mandela had taught himself Afrikaans, and he said, ‘General, if we fight you, we cannot win because you are too well trained, you’re heavily armed, you’re disciplined. We cannot win. But if you fight us, you cannot win either, because there are too many of us’.
So he pointed out the futility of descending into bloodshed and war, that they needed to work it out. And Viljoen, afterwards, he said, ‘I couldn’t resist. Mandela won everybody over’, and within six months, he told his supporters to lay down their arms. So this bloodbath that was threatening in South Africa, it didn’t happen, because of that way of diplomacy and talking.
And this is a kind of leadership that is needed. More diplomacy, more talking, trying to understand the other. Mandela really went to understand, what are the fears of this white minority? They feel they’re going to be wiped out. How can I reassure them?
He understood that leadership is about seeing the bigger picture, not just ‘us against them’, not about ‘what’s in it for me’, for my ego, but to see the bigger picture, the wholeness, and the commonality between all of us, all humans.
The Dalai Lama said, ‘first and foremost, we are human beings’. We need to remember this. So Mandela saw this. He saw the way of collaboration.
I work with Evocative Leadership Mastery. And in this evocative leadership, we understand a principle, very important principle: interrelatedness. Everything in the universe is interrelated with everything else: plants, river, sky, stars, planets, all are affecting each other. We’re part of one whole system, and we have to understand that our well being depends also on the well being of the other.
So we need to collaborate. We need to co-create with the universe. This way of co-creating the future, it means that we are able to ‘open’ to ‘receive’. My teacher spoke about ‘yield’. To ‘yield’ and ‘change’. These twin forces of creation, yielding the receptive, to open, to be spacious, to find our inner spaciousness, to allow space to hear the other.
And then we can change. By joining with our, with the other, I was going to say, with our opponent, but really finding the partnership in opposition. So co-creation and collaboration are the name of the game, or one of the most important things in leadership, in the new leadership that’s needed.
And for me, Mandela is an example of eldership, very inspiring. You know that we can all aspire to this kind of leadership. We all can aspire to that it’s not down to some people who are up there on a pedestal. We can be like that too. We can learn to make tea with our enemies, not just drink it with our friends. Thanks a lot for watching.
